Building Balanced Empathy

Sometimes in the face of others’ distress and suffering, we can feel overwhelmed or shut down. How do we generate a compassionate response in the face of others’ suffering and our own?

The answer is balanced empathy, which helps us build a way of relating to others that doesn’t burn us out, but draws forth our best ability to help ourselves and others. In this talk, beloved teacher Ven. Tenzin Chogkyi will provide advice about how to discover our own innate capacity for empathy.

This is part of our Taste of Buddhism program. Join us for a short talk, meditation, and taste treats on Sunday mornings. Each week features a new topic. Open to all levels. ​

Venerable Tenzin Chogkyi is a Buddhist nun, activist and popular Buddhist retreat leader and teacher. Venerable Tenzin first became interested in meditation after reading "Be Here Now" and "Autobiography of a Yogi" in the early 1970s. She describes her spiritual path over the next 20 years as “meandering and haphazard” until she bought a one-way ticket to India in early 1991 with the intention of meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In the end, she became a student not only of His Holiness, but also of Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche and Lama Zopa Rinpoche during the year she spent studying at Tushita Meditation Centre in Dharamsala, India and Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal.After returning to the US, Venerable Tenzin worked at various positions within Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s organization, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). She was director of Vajrapani Institute, co-director the FPMT International Office, and coordinator of FPMT Center Services. She also completed several long meditation retreats over a six-year period.Venerable Tenzin took preliminary ordination vows with Lama Zopa Rinpoche in 2003 and novice ordination in 2004 with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Since 2006 she has been teaching at various FPMT centers around the world.

Venerable Tenzin is teaches at both the foundational and in-depth level as well as leading long retreats. She is also a teacher of the a.r.t. of Fulfillment, one of the secular programs of the Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom, and in October 2017 will be beginning the teacher training for Compassion Cultivation Training, a program developed by Geshe Thubten Jinpa and colleagues at Stanford University. In addition, she is certified teacher of Cultivating Emotional Balance, a secular program in dealing with emotions developed by Alan Wallace and Paul Ekman at His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s request. She resides at Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel.

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